


commensalism of us

by vaultbug



Category: Subnautica (Video Game)
Genre: Alien Cultural Differences, Developing Relationship, F/M, Mutual Pining, and al-an as the virus who loves her, starring robin as a whipped walking USB stick, subzero early access spoilers, whereas the two realize their minds are more precariously linked than they thought
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-12 06:01:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29005716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaultbug/pseuds/vaultbug
Summary: “So you can control my body at any time?”“Not precisely,” Al-An said. “It requires a great deal of risk. A storage medium as...underdeveloped as yours is not capable of responding to two inputs, especially with your mind as active as it is. I’ve sacrificed most of my processing input alone not to overload your body’s automatic mechanisms.”“Why, thanks,” Robin huffed. “What a sacrifice.”
Relationships: Al-An & Robin Ayou, Al-An/Robin Ayou
Comments: 9
Kudos: 45





	commensalism of us

In her dream, the sea flickered.

She stood tall, hovering among green constructs and the pulsing organs of creatures that were familiar but names lost to her lips. Around her the facility swayed side to side, moving with the currents of the undersea river; she could feel it as if she was the facility, or at least connected on some subconscious level she did not understand. Others like her stood nearby, hunched over respective devices. The air hummed with a frantic energy, as if there was a deadline Robin had missed.

Something nagged. There was a purpose to why she was here.

She drifted aimlessly between ionic constructs, twitching her arms, clicking inquiries at fellow scientists as she passed. None answered – but then again, she already knew we were failing at what we were intending to do. The bacterium had not worsened, nor gotten better. The enzyme still remained the only cure.

Perhaps the egg would help.

Robin blinked. Why had she not thought of that? ( _What egg?_ ) Drawing herself to her full height, she turned towards the main centre of the containment facility. The Others like her moved even before she voiced the thought of moving herself – and suddenly she was at the doorway, as if it had popped into existence right in front of her. Here the egg was stored. Here our world would be saved.

She paused there. _Don’t_ , she thought. She did not know why she thought that. There was a terrible forewarning in her mind, as if she knew this room and the horned faces that fumbled over the egg of the creature that was familiar, but not. She reached out – with a hand that wasn’t hers, all blackened colors and dull biolights – to warn them, to shout _stop!_ but her lips would not move and the voice froze in her chest.

Too late.

A screech like the devil himself rose from the depths. Something hit the side of the building. The floor lurched. Claws – jagged, hooked things – ripped through metal like butter, sliced down. The Dragon was wailing, crying for a child lost. No, it couldn’t attack this facility – the enzyme, we knew the egg could make the enzyme. We just needed a little more time. Our people – his people –

(You have killed them.)

 _What have I done,_ Robin thought and it was with Al-An’s voice.

The claw came down.

* * *

and she woke up, heart in her chest and hands thrown up over her head as if protecting herself from the crumbling structure. Her habitat hummed back, indifferent to her harsh gasps, and as she pulled herself up with shaking hands, the reactor shifted to another core with a loud _click_. She listened to it for a while, pulling her composure back bit by bit, and when her pulse finally beat steady, she leaned back against the wall to stare at the ceiling.

It was then she noticed something. Al-An had detached himself from her mind. While normally she could feel his presence like something wrong at the back of her skull, she could not sense him now. He only did that in times of great crisis or when avoiding her. Something was up.

Robin narrowed her eyes. “What was that?” She almost hissed.

The architect in her mind did not reply for a great length of time, long enough Robin almost considered threatening to swim herself into the nearest leviathan yet again. Then the alien murmured, “I do not know.”

“What do you mean, you do not know?” Robin snapped back, sending a glare at the nearest thing -- which ended up being an unfortunate peeper just minding its business floating along the aquarium tank. (The thing about having an A.I in your head was that you could not glare directly at them when they were being idiotic, so Robin was recently compromising by glaring directly into the nearest window so Al-An could see how deeply unimpressed she was.) “I know what I saw, Al-An. There were architect buildings and needles, and –”

“I did not see what you saw,” Al-An interrupted. That in itself was quite unlike him and Robin hushed herself immediately because of it. The A.I seemed to flounder with words before he finally said, “I saw...glimpses, of what I believe were your memories.”

“Mine?”

“You were young,” Al-An remarked. His voice was barely louder than the hum of the water purifier. “At knee’s height from larger humans…so a child, I presume. Your sister,” and Robin felt a stab of something in her stomach, like Al-An had gutted her with a switchblade and twisted the knife, “Your sister was there. You were making what appeared to be an energy device out of foreign fauna.”

Robin blinked –

* * *

\-- and then she was five years old again, standing between plastic tables at the local science fair, arms crossed as she watched teachers patrol back and forth exhibits with Alterra tablets and fancy lab-coats. Her sister was sitting politely at the front of their science presentation – an elaborate battery fuelled by a monstrous potato plant spliced from different alien faunas. Sam had been so proud of it, Robin remembered. It had won first place.

She, of course, didn’t quite care about that right then. She was more bored than excited to see her sister’s face grow more and more anxious as the teachers grew closer. “This is boring,” she told her sis. “You’re gonna win anyways. Why do I have to be here?”

“Mom n’ Dad are busy, that’s why,” Sam argued back. “And you’re a lil turd who’ll burn the house down if I leave you be.”

“But this is boriiiiiiiiing,” Robin whined. “All the teachers are doing is marking off check-marks for presentation and style. Besides, _teacher’s pet,_ ” and Sam scrunched her face up as Robin sang the nickname, “You could paint a pylon green and call it a mold experiment and you’d win.”

“Oh, shut up, you.”

A teacher turned into the beginning of their row. Sam straightened so fast it was like watching a soldier at attention. Robin rolled her eyes and turned back to the battery, eyeing it in its terrible, monstrous form. It was quite the ugly thing.

And then. Something shifted. Her mind cleared. The world suddenly had focus. It was like genius itself came down from the Heavens and bestowed upon her the gift of brilliance. She had The Idea. It was such a wonderful Idea she turned to Sam immediately and announced it loudly to the entire room. “What if I _eat_ the potato to show them it’s also edible! You made both a power source _and_ emergency food supply!”

“Don’t eat a _raw_ potato,” Sam said back, absolutely horror-struck. “You’ll get _sick.”_

“No I won’t.”

“Yeah, you will.”

"I’m doing it,” Robin declared.

“You will absolutely _not_ ,” Sam said, a final warning.

The teacher stopped in front of their booth. “Sam Ayou,” she said. Her eyebrows rose as she looked up, up into the monstrous beauty that was Sam’s potato battery. “I see you’ve been uh, _busy_.” She chuckled. “So, what exactly is it?”

“A potato battery, ma’am,” Sam said with a toothy grin. “Spliced from twelve different variations of rooted fauna across the galaxy, it’s indestructible to every disease while maintaining a solid 1.25 kilo-watts per hour.”

“And it’s edible,” Robin chirped in – and before Sam could stop her, yanked a part of the potato up and shoved it in her mouth.

(She recalled quite vividly; it _did_ not taste good at _all_.)

* * *

And then she was back and Al-An was saying, “I did not intend to see any of that,” in a voice that almost sounded capable of guilt. “Your mind –“

“That was _private_ ,” Robin snapped over him. Stunned shock had died now to a fuming rage, and she stood up to pace the room. In her mind she still saw Sam, smiling, a gap in her front teeth. “You can’t just go – _digging_ around my memories, as if I’m some entertainment feed –“

“I did not look at your memories of my own vocation,” Al-An interjected over her, just as distressed. “It _pulled_ me; I could not control it –“

“Like _hell_ you could,” Robin said.

Silence. Then, almost hesitantly, Al-An noted, “I believe our minds are more precariously interlinked than I previously hypothesized. Chances are if you sleep, this might happen again --”

“ _Don’t_ ,” Robin seethed.

Silence again. Then, with a click, his presence detached and rolled back into a ball she thought she could feel like a weight in the back of her neck, almost like the first time they met when ( _I offered you my datapad! get Out, get Out)_ he retreated from her anger. She almost felt guilt then; but the memory of her sister’s smile was still too fresh to feel anything other than a dull fervour that pulsed through her hands, down her spine and through her feet into the cold floor. Throwing her hands up, she started to pace -- one, two, up and down her small habitat until she was walking aimless circles around the aquarium just to try and relieve some tension. But it did nothing. Who was she trying to fool? Nothing would relieve this stress except for crying, and there were little tears Robin had left in her that she hadn’t mourned before.

She stopped. “Damn you,” she said aloud -- but who her words were aimed at, she had no clue. Perhaps the fish in the tanks. Perhaps Al-An’s logical courtesy. Perhaps Alterra, for taking her sister, for being the cause of sending her on this wild hunt where the only clues were dead words of a dead sibling who died for a cause that had forgotten her. “Damn this to hell.”

And then, finding no other outlet to stress to, she turned on heel and went back to her bed and laid down; stared at the ceiling, and drew her covers to her chin. 

She did not sleep.

* * *

She apologized a day later, for the feeling of Al-An’s small, beaded form (refusing to touch anything, refusing to _speak_ \--) grew too much to bear. “Hey, uh,” she murmured to herself after she found a nice cave to sit in and relax, juggling thermos from hand to hand. “Uh, Al-An, are you there?”

Not even a shift of recognition from the alien. Robin hated the silence.

“Look,” she continued, not knowing if he was listening. He probably was; it seemed like something he would do, and if not, Robin supposed she could repeat the apology when he was actually paying attention. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap -- it’s just,” and she sighed, leaned back until her head hit the rocky wall. “It’s Sam. I just...didn’t think you knowing about that memory would... _hurt_ , still.”

No response. She juggled the thermos some more, then took a draught. A little bit of feeling came back into her fingertips. 

“I miss her a lot,” she said. “Everyday. But it wasn’t right to take out that on you. Minds can be...tricky, you said it yourself.” She hummed, then added, “I believe you when you said you couldn’t control it, I just -- lashed out, I guess. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean any of it.”

Silence. Then that feeling in her neck stirred and in barely a whisper, Al-An said, “I did not intend to cause you excess stress.”

The relief she felt at hearing his voice would’ve been concerning, had it been anyone else she felt that for. Though, to be honest, a normal person would be concerned upon just hearing the fact Robin willingly subjected herself to subzero temperatures to chase ghosts of her sister. “It’s okay,” she said back. “I mean, it’s really _not_ okay, but you said it yourself, you couldn’t control it.”

“I could not,” Al-An agreed. “It was...distressing. The amount of emotion I witnessed nearly impaired my judgement. It took me much longer to wake you up than I anticipated.”

Robin paused. _That_ was new information. “You can wake me up?” 

A pause. “If need be,” Al-An admitted and it was in a quiet tone again, the type that knew he had admitted too much. “That was the first time I ever used that command, and only because we both were suffering from...distress. I originally did not intend to use it unless in a time of dire emergency as I understood, from your previous reaction to my initial transfer, you find my presence uncomfortable in your mind.” He concluded with a reiteration; “I did not intend to cause you excess stress.”

That was...logical, as well as considerate. “How much control do you have over my mind, anyways?” Robin asked. 

Al-An’s presence at once became very subdued, and she became aware he was cycling through something in her mind, as if musing on how to exactly word his response. “You would not like it,” he finally said pensively. 

She narrowed her eyes again.

“I have considerable access to manipulating your mind’s physical sensory,” Al-An said quickly. “Factors such as bodily health, automatic functions and other organic areas are quite...open, if that is the word to describe it. On the other hand your memory is more...convoluted. I have not attempted to navigate it beyond recognizing what parts of your mind are afflicted by it.” 

He spoke as if her memory was some sort of illness he was attempting to avoid. Considering his reaction to a diminutively less emotional memory she had unwilling dragged him into last night, Robin could see why. What she did focus on came out as, “So you can control my body?”

“Not precisely. You have conscious command. The unconscious I can probe at, although I do not due to their...fragile nature.” Al-An said. Some emotion rose in him then; Robin could only feel bits of it, like watching the murky figure of a man from behind translucent glass. Fascination, horror. Perhaps a bit of apprehension. “Has your species not evolved to monitor your automatic functions and work with them?” The architect asked. “The connection between the human heart and lungs is delicate, volatile. I cannot fathom how you cope with the daily risk you expose your internals to every second, minute.”

“Well, I can’t exactly rewire my nerves,” Robin shot back.

“My species --”

“Yeah, your species upgraded yourselves from Windows 17 to Windows XPS900, I heard you.” Robin snorted, though her tone was light and she meant no offense. “Humans can’t exactly do ‘system upgrades’ like that.” She raised her hands to emphasize the quotation marks. 

“I do not understand what you mean,” Al-An said, though his voice was a deadpan now. Ah, good. So he _had_ been picking up on her social cues. “Another human mannerism?”

She thought of the long, dull conversation explaining what Windows was to him. “Something like that,” she smirked and started to get up. The cold was starting to creep into her legs -- and besides, she wanted to go make some more salads and plant some seeds with the fruit she collected. “Don’t worry about it.”

Al-An mused on that. Then, with a ping, he added another note to her PDA for later discussion.

Robin grinned so wide she nearly split her chapped lips.

* * *

Al-An dropped the third revelation of their shared consciousness about a week later. “Robin,” he murmured when she was out collecting salvage off the broken habitat she failed to make on the side of the glacial cliffs. “I wish to talk about something.”

“Well, my permission hasn’t stopped you from talking before,” Robin snarked back over the buzz of her laser cutter. The metal salvage creaked with a groan, separated from the broken hull and promptly floated gently down to the ocean floor below. “But, alright. Hit me.”

“I cannot physically – ah.” Al-An said, and Robin grinned again as the A.I paused, then added another entry on her PDA for later discussion. “Well, what I wished to discuss to you was regarding a previous inquiry about our current shared state of your stora -- _body._ ”

Robin lifted an eyebrow. “Alright.”

“I previously told you that it was impossible for me to consciously control your body. I have now come to the conclusion that hypothesis was invalid. It is probable I could control your body,” Al-An said. “I do not intend to – but. I thought it wise to let you know.”

Robin stopped mid-stroke. Her brain took that, flung it immediately into panic and she floundered for a moment before spitting, “You’re kidding me.”

“We do not kid,” Al-An informed her. “Jokes would be distasteful in this situation.”

“Not what I meant, Sherlock.”

She did not need to see his face to know the confusion was palatable. “Who is Sherlock?”

 _Oh, boy._ “Nevermind,” Robin snorted and snapped the scanner back on her belt. Pushing off from the rock, she headed back towards her sea-truck – around her the hoopfish scattered, glints of green darting away into nooks and cracks. “Back on topic.”

“You are upset by this.”

That was the understatement of the century. “Uh, yeah?” She scoffed. “What would you do if an alien in your head just announced he could take over your body?”

“I would single-out all traces of his corporeal form inside my storage medium and restrict his ability to maneuver into different sections of my processing unit,” Al-An explained. “Then I would purge him from the rest.”

Robin had to roll her eyes then. “Wish I could do that.”

“I was surprised you did not when I first downloaded myself onto your body,” Al-An agreed. “Is that another –”

“Remember what you promised, Al-An,” Robin warned.

“I wasn’t going to say inefficiency,” Al-An protested. “Merely a…limitation, of the organic nature of your body.”

“Mhm. Yeah, okay.” She let it go though, for there were much more pressing issues at hand than arguing about efficiency and logic with an alien who prided himself on both. Swinging herself into her seatruck, she prompted the chair to rise up and took the controls. The metal salvage she left in the back container. “So you can control my body at any time?”

“Not precisely,” Al-An said. “It requires a great deal of risk. A storage medium as...underdeveloped as yours is not capable of responding to two inputs, especially with your mind as active as it is. I’ve sacrificed most of my processing input alone not to overload your body’s automatic mechanisms.”

“Why, _thanks_ ,” Robin huffed. “What a sacrifice.”

Either the sarcasm floated by her parasitic pal or Al-An chose to ignore it. Both ways, the architect continued uninterrupted. “If I was to prompt my own set of commands over your body, I would have to seize control against your processing unit,” he noted. “I predicted if I did so when we first met, you would have resisted.”

It was great to know the alien in her brain had considered hijacking her entire body for his own benefit. Robin gritted her teeth. “You predicted right,” she replied with a dangerous lilt to her voice. “I _would_ have resisted.”

Al-An did notice that. His voice sounded apologetic when he next spoke. “Ah. You’re offended. Do not take it personally. It was merely a…hypothesis, when you first rejected me.” A pause, and then the alien added pensively, “Perhaps you will be comforted by the notion I did not consider that line of thought long.”

That was as comforting as diving into a volcano. But, Robin begrudgingly admitted, it was a marked development from Al-An’s first attempts at apologizing. She waved him off. “Fine, fine. But that line of thought better stay dead, y’hear me?”

“I am incapable of not hearing you,” Al-An deadpanned without a trace of sarcasm. ( _Spoil-sport,_ Robin thought.) “However, you should have no concern over any hijacking on my part. The strain of our two inputs working against one another could potentially endanger our collective lives."

"Meaning?"

Al-An gave a short hum. "Well, I did calculate several scenarios that might have occurred if I tried to seize control of your storage medium. Granted, these hypotheses do rely on the notion you would not expect a full integration of my mind into yours, resulting in conflict."

"Mhm. Go on."

"Scenario A envisioned a total brain breakdown that would render the physical body comatose, leaving us without any means to control your body," Al-An said. It was cheerfully detached, like how a person might mention they preferred salted chips over barbecue. Robin nearly sheared the seatruck off into a nearby reef because of it. "From there, we would either drown or remain locked in one spot until our body finally died from exhaustion, starvation, dehydration or all three. Or perhaps one of us would be able to regain control of the body before our expiration date, but the body would remain crippled in several aspects of physical well being for the rest of its extended life."

Robin let silence fill the space between them for a moment, absorbing that. Then with a half-hysterical, modestly uncomfortable laugh she asked, "That was scenario A?"

"The most unforgiving. But also more likely," Al-An said. "As stated before, your vessel is only equipped for one input. Even those skilled at multitasking suffer from inefficiencies due to simultaneous inputs requiring attention. The sheer strain of my mind and yours together would break your processing unit."

Robin worried about that for a few moments more. Around the seatruck, vines swayed as she gently set the vehicle down in a nearby plain of sand. Kicking her feet up, she leaned back in the chair to pay full attention to Al-An. "Are the next scenarios as vividly morbid?" She asked bemusedly.

“No," Al-An said. "Scenario B was more forgiving – one of us would become the body’s subconscious mind, trapped without any ability to maneuver or ping inputs. Most likely it would have been me, as your body is more accustomed to your inputs." He paused. "Had that scenario happened, integrating my system into a new storage medium would be excessively difficult. I might've been forced to remain in your body for the remainder of your days. I'm not even certain if you would be aware of my presence after that. I suspect my mind might simply vanish from your conscious perceptions."

Robin scrunched her face. "I said less morbid, Alan," she shot.

"But it is. For you." Al-An paused. "Would you like to hear another?"

"Do we die?"

"No," Al-An said simply. "Scenario Three predicted nothing would happen."

"Comforting."

And for some strange reason Robin could not comprehend, it was.

* * *

She had the idea a week later. "Let's say if I was asleep," she said to Al-An when it was morning and she was staring heedlessly out the window at a symbiote that was sucking at the glass of her habitat. “Would you be able to control me then?”

"Oh, I've already calculated that," Al-An replied. "Hypothetically, I could."

"So why haven't you?"

"You did not give me permission to utilize your body," Al-An said, but there was hesitancy in his voice and Robin knew it was much more than that. "Additionally, your body requires...sleep, does it not?"

"Yes?"

"Ah. If that is the case, I anticipate if I start processing my own inputs through your medium while your mind is unconscious, your body will not process a proper sleep shift," Al-An hummed. "Possibly when you awake you will be more tired than before. Productivity will increase in the short term, but it is an unsustainable lifestyle."

"Ah, but a few nights won't hurt." Robin interjected. "Why not try it out? It won't kill me, so long you don't make me pull three all-nighters in a row." She grinned into the window, wondering if Al-An was monitoring her reflection from her eyes. "Serious. That's my limit. I've tested."

"You are most kind," Al-An said. "But."

"But?"

"But," and Al-An's voice drew exceedingly quiet, to the point where his voice seemed to whisper at the corners of her mind. “But I do not know how to operate your body."

In the time it took Robin to absorb that little tidbit of information, she felt Al-An crunch into a small ball of ( _frustration, shyness, embarrassment_ ) at the corner of her mind. Of course, he tried to cut her off from those feelings just as quick, but she got the briefest taste of his turmoil. “Al-An,” she started and felt the architect’s presence in her mind slink away even more. “Al-An, are you not utilizing my body because you’re afraid of _embarrassing yourself_?”

There was an extended pause, long enough that the delighted hysteria in Robin’s stomach had risen to her throat and she covered her face with one hand. Then, in a snippy tone, Al-An said, “I would not _use_ the word _embarrass--”_

She couldn’t help it. The giggle leaked out and Al-An cut himself off. If omnipresent A.I were able to glower without looking, Robin was sure the architect was doing the equivalent of it right now. “You’re laughing at me,” he sighed.

“I’m not laughing, I’m not laughing,” Robin squeaked back, laughter completely filling her voice. “Just. You? You don’t know how to use my body? What, no human 101 in Architect history?"

"It was not something prioritized, yes," Al-An murmured gruffly. Robin detected the faintest tinge of -- annoyance, was it? -- bubbling on his side of her mind and tried to smother her widening grin. "The situation we find ourselves in now is not something the collective commonly finds themselves in."

"Can't even work these opposable thumbs you were fawning over a while ago?" Robin rolled her thumbs as if to flex. The annoyance radiating inside her head grew stronger. "It's not too hard. Trust me. I was a toddler once. I got into _loads_ of mischief then with these bad boys."

“Now you are mocking me,” Al-An replied.

“What makes you think that?”

“Your laughter,” Al-An said, still the brick wall she knew him as.

“Ah, well, you got me there.”

They sat there in silence for a bit, Robin letting the smugness ebb away into a sort of sated delight. Al-An, on the other hand, stayed annoyed until the architect seemed to give the alien equivalent of a sigh. “I have an inquiry,” he said finally. 

“Shoot.”

“Why are you suddenly amicable to letting me control your body?” Al-An asked. “It is...uncharacteristic, of how you acted before.”

That...was a good question. Why did it not bug her, the way it would’ve before? She stared out the window (the symbiote long gone, disinterested in the taste of glass) and considered her words carefully. Sure, she was apprehensive but, in the months that had passed since her crash-landing and chance encounter with Al-An, the alien had proven to be anything but hostile, although still a bit desperately brash with his requests. That was comforting, in some odd little way. Perhaps it was just because she knew his history, or the bits and pieces she dragged out of him when finding his people’s artifacts. Or perhaps it was just the memory of his that was still replaying through her mind, the pure _terror_ she remembered before the claws went down.

Or perhaps it wasn’t that deep and it was just the fact she would be asleep during the process. “I will not be aware of you controlling my body while I’m snoozing, correct?” She asked.

“No,” Al-An answered.

She nodded. “There’s your reason.”

Al-An’s voice was...apprehensive, the next time he spoke. “That is not a very good reason,” the architect said. “Are humans typically this...reckless, with this behaviour?”

"You’re asking the lady who crashed her drop-pod into a glacier habitat just on the off chance of getting some answers about her sister’s death,” Robin noted. Al-An begrudgingly hummed his assent in her head. “It’s just -- some people don’t like when things are out of their control. I am like that. The idea you could,” _take my body, force me as a passenger to my own functions, make me worthless, useless,_ “Take control so suddenly is...alarming. But, like you said, you can’t. Won’t.”

“But I will still be manipulating your storage medium while you are resting.” His voice was confused then, resorting back to his dialogue when referring to her body. Robin forgave him that merely because of the thin line of anxious ambiguity in his voice. “Does that not bother you? Is it because you will not be aware of the process?”

“Sorta. Think of it like this: we’ve been in this together for a few months, and not once have you tried to press the urgency of getting a new body or finding your people over my needs,” Robin said. “And I... _trust_ you, to an extent. You haven’t tried to kill me throughout all these months stuck on the rock together.” She laughed. “Call it a hunch.”

"A hunch,” Al-An said.

“Yeah, a hunch,” Robin conceded. “Like, I just have this feeling you won’t do anything...rash, or reckless with my body.”

“Well, I doubt I could even do anything as reckless as you driving your seatruck into that cryptosuchus,” Al-An noted. 

“ _Hey._ ”

He remained quiet after that remark, however, a silence she had grown to relate to him contemplating. She waited -- then grew bored as his reflection carried on for a good twenty minutes. When she was just about to get up and begin the day, he finally said, “Alright.”

“Alright what?”

“Perhaps I shall...try it,” Al-An said. 

Robin crowed. “I _knew_ you were curious about my body,” she laughed and felt the annoyance spike back up in her brain. “Have you been thinking about this? Who is the inefficient vessel now, hmmm?”

“Still you,” Al-An said back, all seriousness and she rolled her eyes. The architect then added, “Don’t expect any excess production due to this...development. I doubt I will be able to master the full motor controls of your vessel in the eight hours before you wake up.”

“You better record yourself stumbling around the habitat because that is entertainment I’m almost sorry to miss,” Robin laughed. “Should I baby-proof everything for you? I think I have spare duct-tape lying around here --”

There was another abnormally long pause. Then Al-An, in the tiniest voice possible, asked, “Would you?”

He couldn’t get her to stop laughing after that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These two have my entire heart.


End file.
